George Santayana
George Santayana
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always kept a valid Spanish passport. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 December 1863
CityMadrid, Spain
CountrySpain
What is more important in life than our bodies or in the world than what we look like?
All beauties are to be honored, but only one embraced.
Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.
It is a great bond to dislike the same things.
Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.
Beware of long arguments and long beards.
The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence.
Spirit itself is not human; it may spring up in any life... it may exist in all animals, and who know in how many undreamt-of beings, or in the midst of what worlds?
There is no right government except good government.
Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying first principals to trifles.
Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods.
The Universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, makes it alike impressive.
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.